Reason
by Elz Durden
Summary: This might change who you root for. Spoilers.


The war is spreading.

Everyone is following the devastation – each smart phone beeping with AP updates as another city is hit; as another world power falls. All the channels, on every TV, the screens switch between tests of emergency systems and live news feeds of the destruction. There is panic in the streets and unrest.

Sherlock is unconcerned with it; at first. While India and Pakistan obliterate one another in the search of genetic perfection, he's busying testing the corrosive power of cola. A man's alibi depends on it.

By the time the war has spread to Iran, John becomes extremely worried and on edge and urges Sherlock do the same but he shrugs off his companion's worry. There are always wars. The larger world has about as much weight in Sherlock's mind as the planets and he deletes the incoming news feeds as easily as he does the names of the gas giants.

By the time Sherlock becomes concerned about the war, the world is almost over. Radioactive winds drift through abandon cities. The oceans are all dead or dying; boiled under mushroom cloud skies. A mad dictator rages guerrilla war on the remaining cities, terrorists trying to claim what's left under one rule or another.

Right before London falls, Mycroft more or less kidnaps Sherlock and John – they go hand in hand, after all – and relocates them to Alaska, the last bastion of western culture.

There's a project, he explains, one the government had been working on for years on the fringes of science. To make a super solider. Because drones are all fine and well 'but they lack the savagery', Mycroft's words, not Sherlock's, 'to wage a war'.

There's some objection when Mycroft signs Sherlock up for the next round of testing – Not from Sherlock, he's getting horribly bored at the refugee camp and is ready to put the bland desperation that comes with it behind him – the objections come from the lead scientists.

All the subjects have been highly screened for mental stability. They don't know what putting a 'high functioning sociopath' – Sherlock's words, and they readily agree – will do. Mycroft, in his understated way, insists and that's the end of it.

On the day Sherlock is lead away to the testing site, he searches the filthy tent city like a man possessed. As he moves through the camp, even he is not unaffected by the amount of sickness, of death and disease. Everyone here is waiting to die and most everyone knows it.

When Sherlock finally finds John, the doctor is sitting with his back against a wall, surrounded by discarded gaze and bloody rags. The beginnings of radiation poisoning has colored the circles under his eyes a sickly green and his lips are drawn tight over a too skinny face.

Mycroft finds him minutes later, still watching John and tells him they have to go. Now. That the shuttle is leaving and there are no return trips, it is now or never.

Sherlock grabs Mycroft's arm as they turn to leave and insists in his own understated way, that John comes too.

When Mycroft raises an eyebrow and wets his lips to object, Sherlock cuts him off.

John. Comes. Too.

~.~

Sherlock bears the brunt of the never ending tests in silence. He has eyes only for John, who takes to the tests better than was hoped. Who gradually losses that sickly pallor, who finally wakes up enough to understand what Sherlock has dragged him in to this time.

In another life, John would have rallied against it, perhaps. But he remembers watching London burn to the ground, remembers watching the world end and there's enough solider in him that he simply locks gazes with Sherlock and they share a look of deep understanding.

From then on, they are each other's shadow.

In the battlefield, Sherlock blows away all expectations. He is ruthless and brilliant and stunning. He becomes a figurehead for the Reclamation movement and under his leadership, the world is retaken, one battle at a time. Only Mycroft, who was in the second round of testing, knows the extent to which Sherlock is tempered by John; John who didn't lose his humanity to the treatments, who is ever the voice of reason and compassion – and is the only voice that Sherlock hears.

Mycroft fears for the world if Sherlock ever loses John.

~.~

The wars are over. The world is being reclaimed. There is even a group in New Sweden that claim they can repair the damage to the oceans, in time. The last battles ended long enough ago that people have started to forget, and people desperately want to forget those dark times. This is a new age of enlightenment. A Renaissance.

John and Mycroft approach Sherlock together on that faithful day. It's becoming clear those that underwent the testing do not age as they should and the world is uneasy facing a future where the ninety-eight of them are a permanent feature.

Mycroft is the one to suggest it, with John standing at his side. Sherlock accepts, because really, this world and it's people are boring him. What is one small planet compared to the vastness of unexplored space, with John – with his family by his side?

~.~

Space turns out to be not so vast, after all.

When the people of Earth begin expanding past their own horizon, they decide they will sleep easier if Sherlock and his crew aren't out in all that blackness, like bogeymen lurking. Because everyone knew what Sherlock had been capable of in the Eugenics Wars during the Great Mistake – he was a keystone of history education, a mistake to never be repeated and not to be forgotten.

After a series of stunningly brutal attacks from both sides, his ship is finally taken.

It's John who suggests a compromise and these new 'enlightened' people are happy to accept it.

Sherlock is the first to be put under. The last thing he sees is John standing above him, watching to make sure all his people are put to sleep correctly – that one day they will be able to wake up again.

The last thing he feels is cold.

~.~

The first thing he feels is warm, too warm, burning. He calls out for John and those around him mistake it for his name, at first. And he's worn so many names over the years, he doesn't bother to correct them. In those first few foggy moments, all he cares about is John, that John woke up, that John is safe.

John isn't awake but he _will_ keep him safe.

He allows them to call him John but he doesn't need the constant reminder to push him towards their goals. He does what they ask, he does _everything_ they ask. His finish line is lying in a cold freeze and nothing will distract him.

He realizes his error too late, he's too efficient, too ruthless.

He sees now this 'Federation' won't suffer any more of his people to wake up. Clear logic plays out and the solution is simple. In the end, it's all so simple.

John. Comes. Too.


End file.
